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Kajian Linguistik dan Sastra, Vol. 21, No. 1, Juni 2009: 21-33
influence the learning of English in school. They had basic knowledge to bring to the classroom
and this could make them less anxious.
A second external factor is the role of teacher. It is possible that English teachers at
Sekolah Menegah Umum 1 Banjarbaru were able to create a lively climate in the classroom,
therefore, able to make the learning context less stressful. Teachers could help students
cope with anxiety-producing situations and made the learning context less stressful
Horwitz, Horwitz, Cope, 1986; Price, 1988; Horwitz Young, 1991; Aida, 1994;
Cassado Dereshiwsky, 2001; Gregersen Horwitz, 2002; Daley, 2003; Wörde, 2003;
Elkhafaifi, 2005; Meng Wang, 2006; Woodrow, 2006; Na, 2007. Teachers’ char-
acteristics or attitudes such as being helpful and encouraging could have played an important
role in reducing students’ anxiety in the Sekolah Menegah Umum 1 Banjarbaru classroom.
Another external factor that can influence language anxiety is students’ residence area. Most
students were from urban area. This factor was assumed to influence the students in communica-
tion; they could be more extrovert people, who are accustomed to communicate freely to every-
one. If this is the case, this factor may influence their school life, including the English classroom.
3.2 The Correlation Between Anxiety and Students’ Achievement in English
as a Foreign Language Table 2 below shows the correlation be-
tween anxiety dimensions and students’ achievement. A weak negative correlation is
seen between achievement and overall anxi- ety r = -0.120, p 0.01, not significant. A
weak negative correlation is seen between achievement and communication apprehension
r = -0.094, p 0.01, not significant. And a weak negative correlation is also seen between
achievement and fear of negative evaluation r = -0.032, p 0.01, not significant. Although
these two dimensions show the negative cor- relation to students’ achievement, the possi-
bility are higher than 0.01, which means not significant or there is no correlation between
communication apprehension and fear of nega- tive evaluation to students’ achievement. As a
whole, between overall anxiety and students’ achievement, the correlation is not significant
at p 0.01 level.
But between achievement and test anxi- ety, r = -0.210, showing negative correlation
between achievement and test anxiety, which is significant at p 0.05 level. The negative sign
shows that the higher the achievement, the lower the test anxiety and the lower achievement, the
Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level 2-tailed.
Table 2 Result for Pearson Correlations Between Anxiety Dimensions and Students’ Achievement
29
A Study of Adolescents’ Anxiety and Achievement ... Ridha Fadillah
higher the test anxiety. This dimension has shown that foreign language anxiety is negatively asso-
ciated with students’ achievement.
Therefore, it can be concluded that there is no significant relationship between English
language anxiety and students’ achievement in English as a foreign language as a whole.
Achievement also did not correlate significantly with communication apprehension and fear of
negative evaluation.
In this study, the significant negative cor- relation between test anxiety and students’
achievement supported the premise that anxi- ety will influence the achievement, which is, the
higher the achievement, the lower the test anxi- ety and the lower achievement, the higher the
test anxiety.
This study indicated high school students indeed had the feeling of anxiety in their En-
glish classrooms. And they experienced more anxiety in test situation. Rachman 2004 de-
scribed test anxiety as people who experience intense anxiety when carrying out formal test
or other tasks on which are they to be evalu- ated.
One possible explanation for this result may lie in the students’ English learning orien-
tation. There are two orientations in learning English; integrative or instrumental orientations
Gardner MacIntyre, 1993. Most students in Indonesia, studying English as foreign lan-
guage was for passing the examinations. It in- dicated that studying English has instrumental
orientation. Compared with the students live in the countries where the English is as their
second language, they study English for inter- action out of the classroom. Gardner
MacIntyre 1993 demonstrated that reasons for studying a second language form a number
difference factors in addition to the integrative and instrumental ones, depending upon the
nature of the community and the language con- cerned. It is obvious that community in Indo-
nesia, especially in Banjarbaru where the study was conducted, English is as foreign language
and the purpose of learning English is for pass- ing the examinations.
Connected with the result of this study, which is, anxiety influenced students’ achieve-
ment, it is assumed that because students’ ori- entation in learning English were passing the
English examinations, they tended to feel anx- ious, when they had to face the examination,
therefore their anxiety affected their achievement.
3.3 The Difference between the Foreign Language Anxiety of Male and Fe-
